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Monday, October 31, 2011

Illegal Activity...

In honor of Halloween, I am re-posting my favorite Halloween post ever! (I'm SO wishing I could find this costume right now...)

I illegally entered someone's home the other day. I didn't mean to. My intentions were honorable. I was just looking for cake.

Security rolled by in a golfcart and eyeballed me as I ran out the front door of some woman's home dressed in a toga and clinging a handful of cash.

Let me back up.

Last week was my boyfriend's birthday. Friday night we had ten of his old friends over for Baked Ziti, and Martinis. I wanted it to be a perfect evening. Of course, this meant ordering the perfect cake.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip cake with Bittersweet Buttercream Scharffengerger Chocolate frosting. Ten inches and 4 layers of beautiful, fudgey, chippy and tasty perfection made by Laura's Cake Kitchen (you may know her as Laura from My Life Is a Piece Of Cake. She's a cakey genius and she likes to get paid in cash).

Friday was also the last day of school before Halloween - which means ALL THREE kids had Halloween parties in their classes AS WELL AS a halloween parade on the school yard.

So as soon as I drop off my kids at school, I'm making ziti, moving furniture, setting the table, polishing my grandmother's silver and laying out china my sister later tells me shouldn't be eaten on because it contains lead.

By 11:30 the sauce is made, the ziti is boiled, the table is set and the flowers are arranged.
I put on my costume (the kids insisted I wear one in a show of solidarity - I was Athena, Goddess of Wisdom). I grab my daughters stuffed owl to accentuate my Goddessness (Athena's symbol - but I don't think she carried a Webkinz) and ran out the door. (Complicated hairdo shown in photo).

I spent the next hour and a half running from classroom to classroom as a part of my own personal "no child left behind" policy and managed to help get each party up and running.

I looked at my watch. I had a 1 hour window till the Halloween Parade started on the school yard.

I thought about the cake waiting for me across town at Laura's house. Could I make it? It's tight.

I took a chance.

I made it to her housing complex in 20 minutes. I park. I call Laura on the phone to tell her I'm at her house. Meanwhile, she's at HER kids school applying Vampire make-up to one of her four children, but she says the door to her house is open and the cake is waiting.

I walk in to the house while talking to her on the phone so she can direct me where to go.

I tell her "Laura, I'm putting the cash on your dining room under the brush on the table. Next to the pumpkin."

She's distracted. "Okay. No Luke, the blood looks good there."

I keep walking through the house. "I'm heading into your kitchen." There's a child's scream on the other end of the phone. I look in the fridge. No cake. My stomach drops. Someone stole my cake!

"Laura! There's no cake in here!"

"It's right there." She says.

"I'm looking in your fridge right now and there is no cake."

"It's not in the fridge. Why are you in the fridge?"

"I thought you said it's in the fridge."

"It's not in the fridge. It's on the dining room table. Luke, stop playing with your blood."

"Oh." I close the fridge and walk back out.

No cake.

"Laura. There's no cake on the table!" I'm hyperventilating...visions of fudgy goodness slipping through my fingers.

"It's right there!"

"NO! It's not! There's just a big pumpkin!"

"What's with the pumpkin! There's no pumpkin. Only a cake."

"I'm looking at your table and there's no cake. There's a pumpkin and some placemats..."

She's hysterical laughing on the end of the line. "Sarah...you're in the wrong house."

I am suddenly very aware of the fact that I have just raided some stranger's fridge, and am now standing in the middle of their living room dressed like a drunk sorority girl. I grabbed my cash from under the hairbrush and took off out the door, JUST in time for security to drive by.

I think he would have stopped me for questioning if I hadn't been dressed in a toga, clinging to a small furry owl, and bent over, crying of laughter on some woman's front lawn. I think he was afraid. I would be.

I went to the house next door, found my cake, left the cash and hopped back in my car.

I made it back to my kids' school JUST in time for the first graders to make their rounds on the school track in their costumes.

I took a ton of pictures as each child smiled as they passed me on the track. Completely unaware that their mother narrowly escaped the law. Again.

Unless of course there's an APB out right now for a tall, middle-aged brunette woman in a toga carrying a stuffed owl. Check your local post offices and let me know.